


A Case-by-Case Basis

by tiltedsyllogism



Series: 5+1s [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Army Doctor John, Community: holmestice, Eye Sex, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, For Science!, Getting Together, Gift Fic, Hurt/Comfort, It's For a Case, Johnlock Roulette, M/M, Sherlock's Violin, Sherlock-style, Trapped in a Small Space, fire sale at the trope warehouse, post-case injuries, reconstructing a crime scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 17:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7115845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiltedsyllogism/pseuds/tiltedsyllogism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock thinks he might have figured out something important about his relationship with John - but one must never theorize before the facts. Fortunately, in their lives together, there's a reliable way to collect more facts. </p><p>Or: five times that it was for a case, and one time that it wasn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Case-by-Case Basis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kjanddean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjanddean/gifts).



> a gift for kjanddean for Holmestice Summer 2016. Writing for you was a great treat - it pushed me outside of my comfort zone. I didn't hit all of the tropes that you said you liked, but I hope a sweet, cheery, super-tropey fic hits the spot anyhow. Thanks to my fabulous beta [redacted] and [redacted] for careful and timely proofreading.

1.

John’s mouth was tight, and he drew the surgical thread through Sherlock’s arm hard enough to hurt.

“It’s fine,” Sherlock said softly.

John drew in a breath. It was noisy, the way John’s breathing always was when he was angry and trying not to show it. It always reminded Sherlock of a hoover, but that felt like new information every time, because he never knew where to store it. 

“You knew,” John said, “about his knife. You saw it. _I_ saw it. But you couldn’t wait, could you?”

Sherlock said nothing. There was no point in repeating himself.

“Two centimetres, Sherlock,” John said steadily, in between loud, hollow breaths. “Two centimetres, and it would have been your brachial artery.”

“But it wasn’t,” he answered.

“Planned that well, did you? Cheers.” John pulled the last stitch tight with a painful jerk and craned his neck to the side so that he could see the knot he was tying without blocking his own light. Surgical knots were delicate work, and Sherlock could hear John’s breathing slow as he focused on manipulating the tiny thread.

When the knot was done, Sherlock handed him the scissors from the counter.

John cut the thread and began tucking his supplies back into his kit. “Well, you’ll have a nice scar. Maybe it will remind you to wait for me next time before taking a swing at a serial killer.” John stood and rolled his shoulders, and his glance slid across Sherlock’s face before dropping to the floor. “You want tea?”

“No,” he replied, but that seemed inadequate, so: “thank you.”

John gave a tiny nod but kept standing, intensely still. 

“I swear to God, Sherlock,” he said, each word slow and exact. “You are going to be more careful next time.”

It was the sort of thing John frequently said when he patched Sherlock up after a case, but with slightly altered grammatical structures that shifted the meaning. But that was John: there was always something surprising. Typically, John used the subjunctive to plead his case, and turned to the simple future tense when he was trying to scare Sherlock into complying. It was less obvious what he meant by the simple future in this case. Was he making predictions? Was it an attempt at a request that had got muddled because John was in pain, and it was interfering with his language processing? Interesting to consider that John’s grammatical paradigms would give way under pressure; Sherlock hadn’t noticed this before. John had not been injured, though, only Sherlock. His arm did hurt quite a bit. Perhaps that was slowing his thought processes. The knife had missed his brachial artery, but the resulting injury was still moderately dangerous, as well as painful. Sherlock wondered what John was going to do to make him be more careful.

"Or what?" he asked.

John didn't answer. Sherlock became aware of the sound of the kitchen tap running, the harmonic jangle of water filling the kettle. He was alone in the bathroom.

******

2.

Mondays were delivery days at the warehouse, but John and Sherlock waited until dusk, to be on the safe side. It was, Sherlock thought, an unnecessary precaution; Escribano’s men were moving the cocaine to some other location to parcel it out for distribution. NSY had had this entire section of the shipyard under surveillance for the past six weeks, and the officers might not be particularly competent but any idiot with a badge could surely distinguish between “no activity” and “several men with machine guns.” But Sherlock had remembered John’s strange, thunderous statement (declaration? threat?) from two weeks ago, the night of the almost-stabbing, and had conceded. 

Sherlock picked the lock and unwound the chain from the door, and together they slipped inside and switched on their pocket torches. Long rows of iron shelves, packed with boxes on the lower levels and hollow and hungry above; stacks of discarded shipping crates; a row of small freestanding sheds toward the back. By silent consensus, John went left and Sherlock right, each walking a slow, careful track along one wall, meeting up at the far end.

“Anything interesting?” asked John, voice pitched low.

“Let’s take a look at those sheds,” Sherlock said. “That’s most likely where….”

They both froze as the stale air rattled with sound: someone was sliding open the warehouse door. 

They bolted toward the nearest rack of shelves and crouched down. There were three shelves, running parallel to the front wall and filled like checkerboards with unopened crates, stacked two deep; he and John would be invisible here, unless someone came down to their end of the warehouse and caught them squarely in a torch beam. Sherlock felt a pleasant tingle as the voices echoed like pebbles off the metal walls. John preferred excitement, no matter what he had said the other night, and Sherlock preferred it too.

A hot, close buzzing replaced the spacious silence, and in the half-second it took Sherlock to place the sound, the lights came on.

He and John stared at each other, caught out in the bright fluorescent wash. The voices – seven men, mid-twenties to early forties, all native Spanish speakers but four were fully bilingual, one was a smoker, _not important_ – were still at the far end of the warehouse, but were coming in their direction. Under the snips of conversation (a regional Mexican dialect, heavily accented, he could work it out if he had the time, but he didn’t, _no time_ ) he could detect the clinking of automatic weapons hanging from shoulder and chest straps.

The lower shelves on either side of them were mostly full with crates of different sizes, and the empty spots seemed to stand out like missing teeth. Sherlock crept down the length of the shelf, calculating their options, when John waved him back to look at one in particular. Sherlock looked. The space to the left was wide and empty; far too exposed to be a good hiding place. But the crate itself was tall and narrow, and likely unusually heavy, since it was parked on the very lip of the shelf. 

John jerked his head meaningfully, as if Sherlock were slow, but there was no time to be irritated. Sherlock picked his way carefully into the open space and then wedged himself behind the tall crate. There was only about half a metre’s clearance between it and the crate behind it, but the voices were getting closer. Half a moment later, John edged in beside him, pressing up against his arm. 

Sherlock breathed, and turned his mind to data collection. The men had come closer; they had also spread out, and were talking more loudly. The combination of in-group slang and local dialect made much of their speech unintelligible, but it was obvious they were patrolling for the intruders who had picked the padlock on the warehouse door. 

Sherlock peered sidelong. John’s right arm was horribly exposed. Anyone who came up between the row of shelves – as any experienced mercenary would know to do – would see him clearly. 

Carefully, Sherlock inched his right side backward, closer to the crate behind him. John shifted closer to Sherlock, wedging himself tightly between Sherlock’s hip and the crate in front of him. A moment later, Sherlock’s nose was in John’s hair and neck was pressed painfully against the crate behind him, but John had managed to slide completely behind the crate, out of range of available sightlines. 

Sherlock relaxed. They were well-hidden. Even if they were eventually found, they would retain the element of surprise over the individual who discovered them. It would be a dull wait, and John would likely want to leave as soon as they were able, so Sherlock set himself, again, to gathering what data he could. He tipped his head back and breathed in.

Beneath the standard-issue smell of stale air and rotting wood, Sherlock could detect trace amounts of body odour (unsurprising; it took a lot of work to move so much product) crack cocaine (also unsurprising) and something astringent and plantlike. Galangal – no, dried ginger. That was pleasingly unexpected, and would require some reflection in a quieter moment. Closer to hand, Sherlock could smell wool (John) shoe polish (his own shoes, which had just come back this morning) and the warm, indescribable smell of John’s hair, which was similar to but somehow slightly different than John’s skin. John’s smell changed slightly when he was sweating, as he was now – John was dressed for the cool weather outside, and did not have Sherlock’s ability to adapt. 

Sherlock’s mind snagged. Like the dried ginger, there was something he couldn’t place. He sniffed again. John was sweating from his eccrine glands, but now that he was looking for it, Sherlock picked up a note of apocrine secretion, strong and fresh. John was, possibly:

• responding to recent exertion  
• overheated  
• experiencing emotions of some kind  
• experiencing a hormone spike

 _Narrow it down._ John’s pulse was high, and his breath was coming short. It had been a very brief sprint to the shelves, and the warehouse interior was quite cool, if not so cold as the outside, and John’s body had had several minutes to adjust. Hormones, then. A strange suspicion crackled in the back of Sherlock’s mind. But no, there were too many uncertainties.

Maybe John was nervous. Maybe Sherlock’s proximity made him anxious. It was a plausible theory. Alternately, John might be nervous about the half-dozen armed cartel members patrolling the warehouse, whose express purpose was to shoot them on sight. That also seemed plausible. Sherlock was going to need more information.

******

3.

Lestrade and Donovan had different theories. This was typical. Less typical was the fact that, even after three minutes inspecting the murder site, Sherlock had to acknowledge that both theories were possible.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said shortly. He left with an extra crisp turn on his heel, which he trusted would communicate his thorough command of the situation.

“So what’s your theory?” asked John, as they strode along the quiet, neatly-kept lane back toward the noisy blur of the Hampstead Road.

“Not enough facts.” Which in principle should have made things more interesting, but it had turned out to be a dull case: dull people taken up with dull concerns. Definitely one of two dull people in particular – among the plausible suspects, Raymond Walters and Matthew Creighton were the only physically active men who were tall enough to have inflicted petechial bruising in this particular pattern in the initial act of strangulation – but without trace evidence, forensics could not determine which one. Bedelia Forsythe’s killer had achieved the unusual feat of leaving not a single piece of trace evidence, though the particular circumstances of the crime scene (Sherlock thought resentfully) had likely helped him succeed far beyond the scope of his own ability.

“Marble flooring is needlessly ostentatious,” he muttered, as they climbed into the cab.

“You’ll work it out,” replied John, conciliatory.

“Where to?” asked the cabbie.

“New Scotland Yard…?” John glanced over at Sherlock, letting the question hang.

“No,” said Sherlock. He’d had another idea. “Baker Street.”

John let him think during the cab ride. Sherlock pretended to put that time to good use, but there was nothing interesting about the facts he had, so he focused on controlling his face and his anticipation.

“No tea,” he announced, even before John had got the flat door unlocked. “We need to run a simulation.”

“Good enough,” John said. He draped his coat across his chair and faced Sherlock in parade rest. “Shall I be Mrs. Forsythe or the murderer?”

“Mrs. Forsythe.” Sherlock tossed his own coat onto the sofa. “The newspaper was 3.2 meters from the south wall, and folded cleanly where it hit the floor, which means she dropped it directly when her attacker surprised her, rather than flinging it to the side; therefore, she was standing on that spot, or very near it.” He pointed. “Stand there, it will put you at exactly the same distance from our wall. The coffee table will need to be moved, obviously.”

Sherlock waited patiently while John dragged the coffee table to the center of the room and stood in the cleared space.

“Bit to your left, or we’ll run into the table.”

John moved. There was no reason not to start.

“Right,” said Sherlock. “He approaches her from the front, and attempts a classic stranglehold.” Sherlock stepped forward and laid his hands around John’s neck. John stared up fearlessly, but his pulse was jumping in his neck. Sherlock could feel it beneath the pads of his palms as John looked at him. Sherlock hoped his own palms weren’t as hot as they felt.

“She resists,” he prompted. Flash-quick, John’s arms came up – faster than Mrs. Forsythe, no doubt, personal fitness regime notwithstanding, but Sherlock didn’t correct him, it wasn’t important – and grabbed Sherlock’s wrists while he mimed stomping down on the top of Sherlock’s right foot.

“She would have done left,” said Sherlock, “the Defence curriculum specifies that students should be taught to attack with their stronger side.” Sherlock waved his hand dismissively. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s move on. Break to the side, I’ll catch your shoulders.” He dropped back, then lunged – not quickly enough, but John had waited for him, paused in the first few seconds of escape. Sherlock seized him by the shoulders. This time, he could see John’s throat move. Sherlock felt his own chest go taut.

“So now I, ah, push you back to the wall.” Together they walked carefully across the floor, while John rained pretend blows on Sherlock’s chest and forearms, to give Sherlock a map of where to inspect Walters and Creighton for recent bruising. John’s touch was light. It might have been better, Sherlock thought, if he had been hitting hard enough to hurt.

John’s back hit the wall, and Sherlock laid his right forearm across John’s neck with careful, needle-sharp precision. John went absolutely still.

“You need to keep struggling,” Sherlock said softly.

John nodded and began shoving at Sherlock’s torso, hard enough this time to move him backward. Sherlock leaned forward, concentrating on the balance of their two bodies. This moment was crucial.

“He leaned in,” John said. His voice was thin, and Sherlock double-checked the pressure under his arm. It was as he intended, flush against John’s throat but not pressing on the windpipe. He had been careful.

“You have to lean in,” John said, voice still reedy. “That was how he killed her.”

Sherlock braced his left hand against the wall and leaned, taking the weight on his left. Beneath his arm, John’s throat trembled. Sherlock planted his right hand flat on John’s shoulder and pressed down, creating some space under his arm where John’s pulse fluttered. It was close enough, and John’s windpipe was not bearing any pressure, so he could continue to breathe freely. Though he didn’t seem to be.

“Angle’s wrong,” John said. “You need,” he swallowed, “to lean closer. Need to, ah, cut upward.” He took his own hands from the wall and moved Sherlock’s arm up against his throat. “Like this. S’only way to break windpipe in the right place.”

John was right – it was the only way to replicate the physical evidence – but it also didn’t make sense as a pattern of movement. Sherlock was shorter than the two suspects and John was the same height as the victim. There was no obvious way for him to reproduce the pattern of damage from where he was standing. 

“But how?” he murmured, frowning.

John wheezed, and Sherlock felt a double-flash: panic, then understanding.

_Oh._

He leaned forward and left, over John’s shoulder, till his fringe nearly brushed the wall and his lips were at John’s ear. 

“Like this,” he whispered.

John coughed, and Sherlock immediately dropped his arms. 

John drew a few breaths and gave a jerking little nod. “So that’s that, then.” His voice was still hoarse. “We look for the sick bastard who would want to talk to her as he choked her.”

“Clearly.” Sherlock was still standing close – too close, really, now that the simulation was over. Moving back would be appropriate.

“The, ah, police files won’t be much help.”

“No,” Sherlock managed to say. He was also struggling for breath. “We’ll, um. Have to interview them. Directly. To, to, see.”

“Observe,” corrected John, and let out a wheezy version of his absurd high giggle. Sherlock laughed too, and stepped back into the room in the new bright looseness of the moment. 

John stepped forward, too, and smoothed his shirt down. He seemed to be avoiding looking at Sherlock. Sherlock rocked on his heels and then stopped, feeling like he might tumble backward.

“Still,” he said – and wasn’t it strange, they had been laughing only a moment before, but now everything was wound tight again – “now we know.”

“Yeah.” John tugged at the tails of his cardigan, eyes still on the floor. “Now we know.”

 

******

4 

“Well, Mr. Vernet,” said the gentleman whose name Sherlock had already forgotten, “executive undersecretary is a fine job for a young man making his way up through the ranks. A cousin of mine held a similar post at the Treasury some years ago. He…”

Sherlock nodded attentively, as if he were listening, and meanwhile scanned the ballroom. Well-fed trustees of various foundations mixed with MPs and a handful of celebrity guests. His client, in a dove-grey suit by the hors d’oeuvres island in the center of the room; his alleged extortionist, in an absurd green tail coat. It was hideous, but it did save Sherlock the trouble of needing to track his movements closely.

And then, steering carefully between chattering knots of people, a glass of wine in each hand: John. 

It was clear from his face that he was ill at ease; John hated crowds, as he was happy to tell anyone, and also (although this was a struggle for him to say even to himself) rich people. But however he had felt, he certainly looked the part. Mycroft had ordered John a new suit for the occasion, and for once Sherlock could not find it in himself to resent the meddling. John’s old suit was off-the-rack – it had gaped at the lapels and bagged at the hips – and was not fit for public display. Sherlock had made this point before, but John had always dug in his heels. The difference, Sherlock supposed, was that this wasn’t one of John’s dates, but a high-profile gala where John was to mingle with impressive(-if-still-hateful) philanthropists and government dignitaries. Sometimes John benefitted from being pushed outside his comfort zone. This was one more piece in his (thin) file of evidence. He hoped he wasn’t theorizing before the facts.

“I’m so sorry, do excuse me,” Sherlock said, interrupting whatever worthless thing the man was on about, “my boyfriend’s fetched us some wine, and there was somebody he’d been hoping to introduce….”

“Fine, fine!” boomed Lord Bloviator as John joined them. “I don’t mean to detain you! Parties are for the young, after all,” he added, winking broadly. Sherlock gave him an insipid smile and turned to meet John.

John dodged a late-breaking stray elbow and slipped into the pocket of space next to Sherlock. “Christ, what a trial that was.” He held out the glass. “Was he the…?”

Sherlock shook his head. “Former trustee at Whitbury’s foundation. Turns out they only spoke a handful of times. Besides which he’s an idiot.” Sherlock sipped his wine and nodded toward the far wall. “We’ll need to talk to some of the governing board members. See that women in the blue gown? That’s Joan Mansell. She knew Whitbury fairly well, and they weren’t friends. Come on, we’d best do this while Whitbury is on the other side of the room.” He put his free arm around John’s waist and started to guide him toward their new target.

John anchored himself to the floor in that way he had. “I can walk there myself, thanks.”

Sherlock let his hand drop. If they hadn’t had an audience, a roomful of people who had to continue not to pay them any mind, he would have moved away; as it was, he placed himself at a near distance, solicitous but not close enough to crowd.

“I don’t think boyfriends have to touch each other all the time, Sherlock,” John said as they made their way across the room.

“We’re practically the only people here under fifty. Everyone expects us to be young and in love. It allows them to project their retrospective fantasies onto us. And dismiss us, which is convenient.” 

It was the wrong thing to say; John only looked more uncomfortable.

“Be right back,” he said, as they neared one of the drinks tables. John drained his glass and peeled away from Sherlock to swap his empty glass for a full one.

“I don’t know why we couldn’t have come as colleagues,” he said, as they drew near to Dr. Mansell. Nearly half the second glass was gone, Sherlock noticed.

“’Colleagues’ don’t get themselves on the invitation list for an LGBT Civil Servants’ reception, John. Not without a history of advocacy for the cause. We had to be plausible social climbers, it was easier than fabricating or establishing a service record.”

“Well, then.” John took another pull on his glass. “Gay colleagues.”

“You don’t usually mind a bit of acting for cases.” Sherlock kept his eyes carefully forward. He needed to keep his eyes on Joan Mansell. He needed not to look at John.

“Well. Maybe I do mind, sometimes.”

“But sometimes not,” Sherlock said carefully.

John finished his second glass of wine. “Yeah,” he said, with some venom. “Sometimes not. You’re the bloody mind reader, you figure it out.”

******

5

“You should get some sleep,” John said.

What John meant was that he himself desperately needed sleep, though he may have been too tired to realize it. It made a neat little Mobius loop, Sherlock thought. He was also tired, but his mind was sharp, synthesizing information, lifting up little patterns and discarding them when they no longer proved useful. There was no real utility to this particular pattern, John’s sleep-clouded misdiagnosis of his own exhaustion, but Sherlock knew he would not discard it. 

That, itself, might have been the problem.

Sherlock opened his eyes and glanced sidelong over steepled fingertips to John, slouched in his chair like a miserable shadow. They had been on the case for thirty-two hours, and John was coming up on his limit. In the early days, when John had still cherished the notion of himself as a responsible member of the surgery, he had been perfectly happy to retreat upstairs and leave Sherlock alone in the living room, even when he didn’t have a shift the next day. But now that his blog brought in enough cases to cover rent and expenses, John had devoted himself fully to casework. Sherlock liked most things about this arrangement. But it wasn’t especially pleasant to watch John starve himself of sleep, and in recent months Sherlock had had a harder time ignoring it.

He watched as John’s chin sank down toward his chest, listened to his breath going slow and even, until a moment later he shook himself awake and propped his head on his hand. Half a minute later, the drift began again, and Sherlock felt a brief twinge of hope before John’s head jerked up a second time. More likely a twentieth or thirtieth time, realistically speaking.

Sherlock slid onto his feet and crossed the room to his music stand. Yesterday’s sheet music was still on the stand, and his violin was in its case on the table, instead of in its usual spot under the chair. He took up the instrument and plucked, and John roiled into verticality.

“All right?” Sherlock asked.

John grunted and wiped a hand across his face. “Everything okay?”

Sherlock ignored the fact that he had just asked this exact question. “Hit a bit of a block,” he replied. “It will help me to play a bit. Do you mind?”

“Mmm. No, s’fine.”

The sheet music was for a complicated Hungarian piece Sherlock was experimenting with. It would have been just the thing to shake his thoughts loose. Sherlock stepped back from the stand, out of the way of the evening light falling in through the window that lit the air of the room. John settled back into his chair, and Sherlock lifted his bow.

He hadn’t played Satie in years. The slow, steady cascade of the Gymnopedie No. 1 was not challenging enough to force his thoughts into new patterns, but as he watched through the warm golden fall of light between them, he saw John sink lower in his chair, watched his breathing slow. Two minutes in John gave a loud snore, and then settled back without waking.

It was a short piece, rather dull for the musician, which is why Sherlock had never bothered to learn the later movements. Sherlock watched John’s peaceful breathing and realized that he had started again from the beginning. The simple fingerings allowed his hands to follow effortlessly in the wake of his thoughts: the slow, even rise and fall of John’s chest. As the light crept further into the flat, spreading out the golden fingers of the sinking sun, Sherlock played, and played.

******

+1

“Get your coat,” Sherlock said, and hoped it would be enough. It usually was.

He had chosen a Greek restaurant near the park which had both excellent food and simple décor. They walked there in companionable silence, drinking in the freshness of the evening air. John was clearly surprised when Sherlock turned in under the little green awning, but followed without hesitation.

“So why are we here?” he asked, as he scanned the menu.

Sherlock took a sip of water. “Dinner.”

John smiled at him across their tiny table, a little half-smile that telegraphed a dozen things at once: _This, again. Of course it is. You’ll tell me at some point, you wanker. I trust you. I hope it’s fun._ Sherlock fastened his attention to his own menu and tried to breathe normally. All of his planning, he realized, was not going to be helpful. 

“Sherlock?” John was staring at him inquiringly.

“Nothing,” he said hastily.

John raised an eyebrow. “You’re not eating?”

Oh. The waiter. He had gotten distracted.

“The grilled octopus,” he said, and hoped it would take a long time to prepare. 

The waiter left, and then it was just John, looking at him. 

“All right?” John asked.

“What? Yes.” This had all seemed easier when he was imagining it: his observations from the past month, their most likely explanation, his recommendations for future action, the explanation of mutual advantage. He had run through it dozens of times in his head, now, watching John as he flipped through police files, or held his gun at the ready, or cleaned the worktop in the kitchen. But looking at John looking at him, the words dried up in his throat.

John folded and unfolded his hands a few times. “So what’s this for? Is there a case?”

“No case,” Sherlock said slowly. John had sensed Sherlock’s demeanor and was expecting conversation. He cast about for a topic of discussion.

“So how is… your novel?”

John frowned. “It’s… fine, I suppose.” He paused. “Since when do you care?”

Sherlock picked up his fork and twiddled it. “I… care.”

John said nothing out loud, but he didn’t need to. Sherlock felt his insides curdle.

John seemed on the verge of speaking when the waiter reappeared with their food. Sherlock could have stabbed the man with his fork, but instead he stabbed the octopus, which turned out to be delicious and probably deserved to be eaten with better grace than Sherlock could currently manage.

John sighed and looked down at his plate.

“How is your food?” Sherlock asked.

“It’s fine. It’s quite good, actually. But Sherlock—” John laid down his knife and fork and looked at him.

Sherlock held tightly to his silverware and refused to answer an unspoken question.

John rubbed his face with one hand. "Is this a date?"

Sherlock’s mouth tightened. “I’m fairly sure it isn’t.”

“All right.” John suddenly looked very tired. “Then what is it?”

Sherlock looked down at his lap. “Call it a failed experiment.”

“What…” John paused and searched for words, the way he often did. It was incredibly irritating. “What sort of experiment is it?” 

“Irrelevant.” 

“Not to me.” Sherlock looked up. John’s voice was tight, bound up with something Sherlock could not identify. 

“Tell me again, Sherlock,” he said quietly. “Is this a date?”

Of course John would fixate on the simplest, stupidest definitions. “Obviously not,” he snapped. "Dates are when you buy a woman dinner and attempt to charm her into sleeping with you." This whole evening was a terrible idea. He had been stupid for trying it.

John went a bit red. “That’s… that’s not the only kind of date.”

“It’s the only kind you go on,” Sherlock shot back. He tensed his legs to hold them still. He couldn’t pace in the restaurant – he had no wish to draw attention to himself, at the moment – and he couldn’t go home, because John was the only one who had brought house keys. Stupid.

“That could change,” John said softly.

“Oh, but why change now, when you’ve got it down to an art form?” Sherlock was warming to the game now. “Just a man of the people, John Watson, upstanding citizen, bit of a rogue, but he’ll always –” 

"Wait, Sherlock, stop." John reached across the table and took his hand. Sherlock stopped. He stared at his hand in John's. That amount of data, while difficult, was more manageable than the alternative.

"That's not what– all right, guilty as charged, that's what most of my dates are like.” John touched his thumb to the knuckles of Sherlock’s hand, a gentle tap on each finger. “But it’s not… it doesn’t have to be like that.”

John continued to tap gently across Sherlock’s knuckles, over and over again. It had the practiced quality of something he had been doing for a long time.

“So what, then,” Sherlock said, around the lump in his chest. “What are the… alternatives?”

“Dunno.” Tap, tap, tap. “We’re all right, though, when you’re not trying to… be anybody.”

“You pretend too,” Sherlock said sourly.

“Fair enough.” John winced a bit. “Just you and me, then.” _Tap, tap, tap._ “And then when we get home it can... Also be you and me.”

His hand, in John’s. He had tried to think of everything, but this had never occurred to him.

“All right.” Sherlock felt too full to smile, too full almost to speak. “Shall we go now?”

John looked down at his chicken. “I would like to finish this, actually. Since we’re paying for it.”

Right. This wasn’t Angelo’s.

“All right,” Sherlock conceded. “But soon.”

“Yeah,” John smiled, face full of light. “Soon. And in the meantime,” he added, with a sharp nod at Sherlock’s plate, “eat your dinner.”

Sherlock picked up his fork.


End file.
